


Obituary by John Watson, M. D.

by halloa_what_is_this



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Dystopia, Gen, Homophobia, John as the storyteller Evey, Sherlock as the caped crusader V, Sherlock/V for Vendetta - fusion, The V for Vendetta Universe, V for Vendetta - Freeform, WIP, Work so bloody much in progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 18:35:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halloa_what_is_this/pseuds/halloa_what_is_this
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It goes: remember, remember, the fifth of November. But John wants the people to remember the man behind the gunpowder treason and plot, the man he will never forget.</p><p> </p><p>John Watson, invalided back to England from the war in America, is saved one night by a stranger in a long coat and a wide grin. Behind the smile, there is Sherlock Holmes, vigilante looking for vengeance on the government that has torn the country apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Obituary by John Watson, M. D.

**Author's Note:**

> Edited 7/9/2014. This might change, WILL change still.
> 
> I shall publish a separate work on the process of writing this. Let us just say that it is a Project which began in November 2012 and has been on-going ever since. First, there were gifsets on Tumblr. Next, there must be a complete story.

“ _Good evening, London!_ ”

John jumped up in his bed, hand going for the gun under his pillow.

“ _It is nine o’clock and this is the voice of Fate broadcasting…_ ”

Outside, the Big Ben started to strike the hour, steady and hollow. It always sounded like funeral bells to him now, always in the mercy of others, not vice versa.

He missed the smaller bells of other churches, like the ones at St. Margaret, where his cousin had got married just before they detached the bells from every church and bell tower other than Big Ben. For over 20 years London had only had one great clock according to which they adjusted their lives.

And every day, from six to nine on the hour, the voice of Fate boomed from the radios that were adjusted so that at the time of the broadcast, the radios went on all around London and could not be turned off before it was over.

He had only been asleep for sixteen minutes, and already he was soaked in sweat, trembling and gasping for breath. He tried to keep his eyes open to escape the images of the nightmare, _firing, shouting, flashing lights and bleeding, too much bleeding._ He squirmed under the blankets in his bed, _he squirmed on the grass, on the sand with bullets whistling just over his ears, how did he get here? He wasn’t supposed to be in the action, he was a doctor, for Christ’s sake! He had only gone out to help a wounded soldier and dragged him several miles from the front line back to the camp. Suddenly, ground shaking, bullets flying, men shouting,_ and he woke up drenched in sweat in his flat in London.

Deep, shuttering intakes of breath, quick look to check that his hands weren’t soaked in blood, that the booming voice was in fact the voice of Fate from the radio, not his commanding officer barking orders to attack, to leave the wounded behind, to _slaughter those American bastards_.

Dragging himself upright, cursing the heavy weight of the useless leg, he sat back against the cold wall.

The government flats were always cold. He had only lived in this one so far, having been invalided from the war only a month before, ready to face any kind of conditions that would get him out of the foreign country and back home. He was ready to live with rats and bedbugs if he could just get to England alive.

Now he wasn’t so sure anymore.

Never mind the cold of the flat, the lack of proper food (he was used to that, in the army the rations were even smaller and tasted twice as foul), the tiny pension, but he was alone and homesick to a place that wasn’t there anymore.

Reaching out to the night stand, he stroked the leather cover of his father’s journal, opened it and just let his eyes rest on the familiar handwriting.

This was home, the crooked, large words of a man who had left the country so long ago, his own name on several pages, Harriet’s name accompanying it on more than one occasion.

His mother was not mentioned as often, he had only found her name three times so far. In all the 230 pages of the notebook, filled almost black with notes of the everyday events of Walter Watson’s life, he had mentioned his wife on merely a handful of occasions.

                                                            --------------------------------------------------

He knew he was thinking too much nowadays, even more than usual since his return to London. _Don’t think too much, you’ll only get in trouble_ , his mother had told him when he was younger. Stupid advice, idiotic mother. The unasked questions pressed in his mind now, years and years’ worth of whys and whatfors filled his head with their buzzing and he had no one to answer them.

“Excuse me!”

The question that was in the front of his mind was for the dead and wounded still in America, the ones who would probably never return to home country but would be buried in a foreign ground and above them the stomping of combat boots and blaring of guns would continue after eager minds had been recruited to protect the honour of England. The youngest soldier he had met had been seventeen.

“Hello, I’m speaking to you! Are you deaf?”

He had an answer ready for that as well: _God, I wish I was. I wish I wasn’t still me, still in one piece but my sanity gone_. That was the essence of him now, perfectly fit but with hollows in the centre, perhaps not as many as in the young private he had seen a flash of before he had been rushed past him to the morgue. No reason to try and help, he was gone.

More enough to make him angry and retort with something any regular angry British man late in the evening would use when some idiot started harassing him with no reason.

“Piss off.”

He assumed his military stance, which made the tallest one squint his eyes in recognition, unconscious twitch in his back muscles showing that he too used to serve the country.

“A soldier, eh? What do you know, we got ourselves a toy soldier.”

A barking laughter filled the tiny alley.

“Didn’t know they made them that small,” someone said behind him.

“Doesn’t make any difference, you know,” the first man remarked sternly, reaching into his pocket. “Soldier or not, you are violating the curfew, and we have the right to correct you.”

Shiny red two-barred cross on black velvet stared John in the face.

“Oh God, you’re Fingermen,” he breathed.

“Take his cane.”

He tried to keep hold of the rubber handle, but it was torn from his sweaty hands and when a leg connected with the back of his knees, he fell down in the muddy ground. His face pressed down, from the corner of his eye he could see the moustached Fingerman stand directly over him and his fingers go to his belt.

_What the hell?_

Something whistled over his head. He didn’t pay it much attention, but face pressed to the ground and the cold water of the London gutters seeping through the front of his clothes, unable to see, he startled when he felt warm wetness drip down his cheek. The grip of the Fingerman holding him down loosened suddenly and the man fell heavily to the ground, gurgling sound erupting from his throat. He fell and landed directly in John’s line of view and he could see the hilt of a knife embedded in his larynx.

The skinnier Fingerman who had been holding his legs down suddenly let go and John could hear him run manically down the alley. Another swish, and the man fell down with a sharp shriek. John’s instincts kicked in the moment he was free, and he sprung to attention, inspecting his surroundings, eyes landing first on the Fingerman that had tried to escape. Another knife had gone straight through his kneecap, and the man was crawling away, dragging his wounded leg behind and whimpering pitifully.

The doctor in him screamed that he should help the man, but he could do nothing without his cane. The Fingermen had kicked it away, and now it was lying on the ground, not far from where the leader of the three was fighting with the strangest looking creature that could possibly have appeared round a London street corner.

Black cape, pointy hat, patent leather shoes and a knife in each hand, the man swung himself through the air like gravity didn’t affect him. His movements so easy and light, John saw he was only having fun with the man panting and puffing in front of him, trying to get in at least one hit. The caped crusader was clearly not going to lose the fight, but his lingering on trying to tire out the fatty would cost both him and John valuable time of being noticed by the surveillance camera and getting caught by a larger group of Fingermen.

He crawled the few inches to his cane and swung it towards the fighters. The cane landed with a clutter behind the Fingerman just when he took a step back and tripped on the fibreglass slippery with street grime. His head hit the cobblestone with a crack, and in an instant the caped man was on him, swinging his knife in a circle like a cowboy would a gun.

“Don’t!” John screamed.

The knife went through the Fingerman’s mouth just when he was about to scream. The caped man stretched his back and rolled his shoulders, face still in the shadow of his ridiculous hat but a content sigh purring through his lungs. He turned his head to John leisurely, getting to his feet and shaking himself all over, like he’d just had a decent hour of yoga exercises and needed to shake the drowsiness out of his limbs.

“Don’t worry, the blood is not yours.”

John’s hand shot up to his cheek and came back scarlet. The blood of the Fingerman now lying on the ground with a knife through his throat had already dried on his skin and the metal scent of it made him dizzy.

The caped man was going from one Fingerman to another, pulling out his knives and cleaning them on a handkerchief before sliding them under his cape. When he passed under a street lamp, John could see his outfit better, the cape and hat pitch black against the sudden halo of the light. Hanging open as it was, he could see a black suit, a thick belt and dozen or so knives attached securely to it.

But the face that finally came into view under the dim fluorescent light was even stranger than the outfit: white smiling mask with moustache and beard painted on it, even some red to highlight the cheekbones and bring life to the porcelain skin, eyes empty in their sockets. The slits followed the blood trails the wounded Fingerman had left behind.

“You want me to go after him and kill him?”

“What?”

“He hasn’t gotten too far,” the man noted with a wave of his coat. “I could drag him here and leave on a pile with the others. Or I could nail him to the nearest wall with his trousers down. Which one would you prefer?”

“Neither,” John choked out.

“No matter,” and with another wave, the man turned and stared at John still sitting on the ground. “He has quite the story to tell. And I’ve already disabled the surveillance cameras on this alley, so if they want to find the others before some innocent passer-by does, would be good he got to tell it to someone.”

“What were they ---”

“Many of them use the victims of their assaults to suffice their homosexual tendencies. And I’m not the only one who has the ability to make a CCTV camera look away for a few minutes. Or fifteen if needed.”

“Th --- They rape – men?”

The man tilted his head.

“You cannot possibly be surprised.”

“But… Don’t they know about it? The Differentiation Act ---“

“The act only refers to homosexuals, or ‘undesirables’. That is, the people who get attacked and molested by the government officials. The Fingermen are not the unwanted, they just punish the citizens who are with any means imaginable.”

“Who are you?”

The mask smiled at him, suddenly looking more amused than it had been. The man leaned down on one knee, the coat floating behind him with the airflow and fluttering down so it was covering both him and John, still sitting in the grime of the alley, his leg useless without the help of his cane.

The empty eyes looked deep into his and all the while the man was leaning in slowly, the grin seeming to widen.

“Can’t you guess?”


End file.
